If there is one request by patients which is universally spurned by doctors, without fear of being labelled paternalistic, it for steroids as performance-enhancing drugs. Extensive research confirms that anabolic steroids damage the liver and the heart, among other problems.

If widespread steroid use is discouraged for men, why haven’t the neurological effects of the steroid-based contraceptive pill on women been studied as thoroughly? In a challenging article in the open source journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, three Austrian researchers argue that 50 years after its introduction, it is time to study what the pill does to the brain.

“Changes in brain structure and chemistry cause changes in cognition, emotion and personality and consequently in observable behaviors. If a majority of women use hormonal contraception, such behavioral changes could cause a shift in society dynamics. Since the pill is the major tool for population control, it is…
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The notion that religious convictions have no place in medicine or bioethics is widespread and growing. After the Canadian Supreme Court recently found that euthanasia and assisted suicide are constitutional, for instance, there were immediate suggestions that doctors who refused to assist on religious grounds might have to find other employment.

Writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar argues that this is wrong. First, because it assumes that only secularity is rational. “The ideal of secular medicine as a realm of reason and therefore as untroubled by deep metaphysical and moral disagreements is a fantasy,” he says.

Second, because religion itself, or at least the Christianity which he professes, is not irrational. Respecting other beliefs, it seeks to persuade with rational arguments.

Head transplants are a familiar theme in B-grade sci fi films which lends itself to an infinitude of excruciating puns. But according to an Italian scientist, it could happen within two years. Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group want to use the technique to help people with degenerative diseases like ALS or whose bodies are riddled with cancer. He told New Scientist “the major hurdles, such as fusing the spinal cord and preventing the body's immune system from rejecting the head, are surmountable, and the surgery could be ready as early as 2017.”

Other scientists are sceptical. “"I don't believe it will ever work, there are too many problems with the procedure,” one neurosurgeon told NS. However, Dr Canavero plans to present his ideas at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons (AANOS) in Annapolis, Maryland, in June.

Cryonics – or preserving the body or brain by freezing them for resuscitation in a more technologically advanced age -- is generally regarded as science fiction. However, it is a small industry in the US, where an Arizona company, Alcor, has cryo-preserved about 80 people and 30 pets.

One bioethicist has offered a thoughtful defense of the procedure, arguing “that the potential value that it might help realize is very big” and that “there is a non-negligible, even if small, chance for success”.

Moen argues that the technology, though perhaps still many decades away, will in principle be available to us eventually. Considering the huge potential it holds, we should invest more resources in the field. He…
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The law, passed by the ruling junta government last week, stipulates that foreigners will be prohibited from using Thai surrogates unless they have been married to a Thai national for at least three years. The violation of the law carries a prison sentence of up to ten years. Agents for surrogate mothers also face lengthy prison sentences.

"This law aims to stop Thai women's wombs from becoming the world's womb. This law bans foreign couples from coming to Thailand to seek commercial surrogacy services," said Wanlop Tankananurak, a member of Thailand's National Legislative Assembly.

In the fight to end polio, the Pakistani government has for the past year made safe-haven for internally displaced persons (IDPs) conditional on receiving polio vaccinations.

The country’s ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League, has made polio drops mandatory for anyone leaving the country’s tribal areas – the regions in which the worst polio outbreaks have occurred. Previous voluntary vaccination programs in these regions have failed to eradicate the polio threat.

As the stakes grow higher, the authorities have chosen to prioritize public health over individual consent. A significant number of refugees refuse the vaccine and are turned back at regional checkpoints. In June last year, for example, nearly 40 trucks carrying internally displaced persons (IDPs) from North Waziristan en route to Afghanistan were turned back by the Pakistan army at the Pakistan-Afghan border. The refugees demanded that they be first provided with food and shelter before the administration…
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After eight people were shot to death this week in rural Missouri, the debate over psychiatrists’ confidentiality in treating people with mental illness has revived. Coincidentally, the American College of Physicians, seven other national health professional organizations, and the American Bar Association, made several recommendations this week about how to decrease deaths and injuries through guns.

One of them is to “oppose state and federal mandates that interfere with physician free speech and the patient-physician relationship, including physician ‘gag laws’ that forbid physicians to discuss a patient's gun ownership.”

The idea is that even mentally-ill persons have a constitutional right to bear firearms. Several states have passed laws guaranteeing this. Florida’s law, which was passed last year, specifies that “A health care practitioner … may not discriminate against a patient based solely upon the patient’s exercise of the constitutional right to own and possess…
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The daughter passed away four years ago from bowel cancer, but not before having her eggs frozen.

The mother, 59, claims that the daughter asked her to bear her baby in the event that she succumbed to cancer. The mother and her husband are now fighting to receive IVF treatment using the girl’s eggs. They claim that in receiving the treatment they will be honouring their daughter’s dying wishes.

Importantly, the objection made by the British authorities is not a matter of deep moral principles, but rather a question about whether the daughter had given express consent to the use of her eggs.

The assisted suicide of American woman Brittany Maynard on November 1 may have tipped Colombia into legalising euthanasia.

Euthanasia has been in legal limbo in the South American nation since a decision by its Constitutional Court in 1997 that “mercy killing” was constitutional and that doctors who cooperated should not be prosecuted. It urged the government to pass a law to regulate the procedure. The government did nothing. Even sympathetic doctors were afraid to test the law and refused to have anything to do with euthanasia.

However, the issue continued to simmer away. One notorious doctor, Gustavo Quintana, claims that he has killed 200 patients in Colombia and abroad.

Two New Zealand academics have proposed that surrogacy become a profession like nursing or teaching which is fully integrated into the health system. Writing in the journal Bioethics, Ruth Walker and Liezl van Zyl, of the University of Waikato, contend that both commercial and altruistic surrogacy have so many potential moral, legal and emotional complications that a complete change in the framework is needed.

Their discussion centres on decisions about whether to abort a surrogate mother’s foetus if there is a substantial abnornamlity. It would be unethical for commissioning parents to request abortion for a minor abnormality like a cleft palate, but in cases of severe abnormality, “abortion would be the morally responsible thing to do”.